surf action from narrabeen

[avkomp]

Sir tristram and I went to narrabeen beach today after we finished trying to photograph the ospreys.

found that 400mm had enough reach for surf shots.

This is the first time I have tried photographing surfing, so be kind!!
I shot heaps and the rest of the gallery is here:
http://www.avkomp.com/gallery2/v/surfing/
I will throw the rest of em in there when I resize them. probably after dinner.

Steve

[terminator]

Both fantastic shots.
You nailed em

[Jeff]

Great shots.you seem to have a close shooting spot.

Jeff

[Sir Tristram]

That 1st photo is the same bloke in my posts as well Steve.

http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php?t=18985

[avkomp]

that guy seemed to be the best surfer out that arvo.

It was fun to shoot the surf shots.
It made a complete change for me.

I was happy with the results also. BTW, I added a pic to your matrix surfing thread. I had a few of people in unusual poses and picked the weirdest one. looks like they are performing kata bassai dai whilst surfing.

Steve

[BBJ]

Steve, well done mate i had a poor effort today on my lil trip but would have been nice if i took the bigger lens and sunshine would have been good. Well done they look good.

[avkomp]

bbj: john and I went out to try and photograph raptors. when that didnt pan out, we decided to try our hand at the surf shots.
john had his 300f2.8 with the tc17 and I had the 400vr.
I tried the 300 and tc and again I felt performance ATE the 80-400vr
but the vr was still able to handle the shots.

steve

[Slider]

Great shots Steve. Beautifully caught.

[byrt_001]

this a better shots than the previous post, becuase i think they have more contrast and the clarity is better. i think becuase of the sun shine.

great shots

christian

[Pa]

nice clear shots steve, well done number 2 for me.
cheers pa

[bindiblue]

Great shots Steve,, good work, so sharp n clear, might have to head up the coast next week and try my 400 VR out,

suzanne

[avkomp]

go for it bindi. btw here is some of the settings I used and reasoning behind:

normally with birds I use centre weighted metering but I used matrix mode for these as I felt that the water and foam would contribute to the lighting of the shots significantly. Also the water would act like a reflector and help light the surfers.
The white foam will be the brightest stuff in the frame so you could probably spot meter on that and set exposure based on that
OR
do what I did: I assumed that around -1 compensation would be about right so I took 1 shot with no comp and look at the blinking highlights display.
(which looked like a xmas tree as expected)
so I dialed in -1 compensation and reshot. this time no blinking highlights.
I felt that maybe I could use less comp so dialed in -.66 and started to get the odd blown highlight so went back to the -1 and left it there. I boosted exposure by .2 ev on the comp because I felt the shots were a little tiny bit dark.

If unsure of lighting conditions the blinking highlights display and or histogram display are your most valuable screens.
I leave my camera on the highlights screen most of the time and if I feel that some highlights may have been lost, I can see immediately.

I felt the 80-400vr was enough lens to get the shots, more reach wouldnt have gone astray, but I didnt have it.

I shot as close to the hard sand as I could (without going near the spot where a wave might come up and wet my gear.)

I used my tripod and wimberley head and had vr off for these shots.
I found that operator fatigue was way less like this. use your tripod, (vr off) maybe take a folding chair and sit down in comfort whilst getting the shots.
We didnt have chairs but looking back it wouldnt have been hard to take one

these shots were taken mid arvo.
mainly because we were birding prior to that.
it may be a reasonalble time to do this as the sun rises in the east and east coast beaches by definition east, so the sun will rise over the beach.
the sun was behind us when shooting these because of the afternoon conditions.
I think this helped as there was no strong light in front of the camera.

Hope this helps

Steve

[Wocka]

You didn't go last Saturday morning as well did you, 1/7/06 @ North Narrabeen?
Notice the tripod on the right. Taken about 9am.



Cheers,

[avkomp]

hmmm, it seems I have a stalker.

yep.
that is me on the left and cows go moo on the right.

waiting for birds of prey. specifically the osprey shots we posted on the forum.
also the pelican shots were also taken from this spot!!

Steve

[Cows Go Moo]

Damn, I'll have to watch out for paparazzi in future...
I think this is where I'm trying to give AVKOMP some tips on takings photo's of ospreys...

[ozimax]

Great shots Steve, you've got the spray/foam just about perfect, which is very hard to do. Seems like you were 10 metres away from each! well done, Max

[mark]

Steve

Both excellent captures, clear and sharp... But I can't go past the First, catching the surfer at the top of the turn... As a surfer myself the second dosen't really hold my interest as there is no real action there, for me anyway...

Your advice on how you took them is great and I learnt heaps from it, thanks..

I'm also glad to know the 80-400 does the job, I have a 70-300g which doesn't seem to cut the mustard and I have been thinking about the 80-400 .... Anyone want to buy a KTM motorcycle???